


war wounds and battle scars

by Ejunkiet



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/M, Mass Effect 1, Post-Battle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-22
Updated: 2016-03-22
Packaged: 2018-05-05 04:50:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5362052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ejunkiet/pseuds/Ejunkiet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>"I believe the humans have a good term for it: ‘shit show’.”</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	war wounds and battle scars

**Author's Note:**

> Now this is a throw back… I recently started replaying the Mass Effect series after several years and I’ve fallen in love with these games all over again. This is the continuation of a _very_ old kinkmeme prompt, set during the original Mass Effect game shortly after the mess that is Virmire.

Crimson, he believed the human word for the colour was. A rich, brighter red, with a consistency somewhat thicker than water, but fluid enough that it flowed more freely than his fingers could grasp the sachet of medigel and seal the wound.

 _Crimson_. Spirits, it was _everywhere_. Her skin, her hair, his hands, his arms; even beneath his talons. Her vitals flickered across his visor, observed and acknowledged by some part of his awareness, the jagged line following her heart beat fluctuating rapidly.

Apply more pressure. Smooth the gel across the torn tissue. ( _Tissue_ , such a human word for a uniquely human condition: soft skin and muscle that was so easily broken and torn.) Wait the couple seconds for it to seal, before moving on, to the next one, and the next one.

Did he have enough time to stop the bleeding? Was she going to die? She couldn’t – not after all they’d seen and survived together. Not before they’d caught the bastard that started all this, and revealed the true depths of his betrayal to the Council – the proof that Saren’s actions had put more than just a few outlying worlds at stake, instigating a series of events that could put the entirety of galactic civilisation at risk.

Spirits, was her temperature meant to be that low? Was he- was he losing her, even now as he moved on to the last, final wound: a three-clawed strike that lacerated the skin in the vulnerable area between the join of her upper and lower armour. Her waist was exposed – despite his best attempts to preserve her modesty, it was necessary to be able to access the wound – and the bleeding, it - it just wouldn’t stop, seeping beneath his fingers as he pried away the remains of her under armour.

There was a pounding of feet behind him, and he half-turned, unable to tear his focus away completely from the broken body before him, harmonics thrumming with anxiety. “Liara-”

“I’m here!”

“Shepard, she-”

“Chakwas is on her way. She instructed me to tell you to keep up the pressure. And breathe, Garrus. Breathe.”

There was a moment of silence in the shuttle bay, broken only by the sound of an explosion that shook the rapidly accelerating ship, the deep-throated boom of a nuclear warhead that heralded the end of the Saren’s cloning experiments, bought with the life of one of their crew. Two minutes brought them out of the atmosphere and speeding towards the nearest relay, leaving the deceptive beauty of the planet of Virmire behind them.

–

Less than a second after the final seals have secured the shuttle into place on the docking platform, the shuttle bay becomes a flurry of activity, and what remains of the ground crew - the wounded Gunnery chief, the Krogan and himself, all told - are quickly replaced by more capable hands as Shepard’s body is lifted onto a stretcher. 

He stands back as the older human doctor - Chakwas, that was her name - moves into the fore, her fingers a blur on the holographic interface of her omnitool as she belays orders at the gathered crewman attending to Shepard’s body, taking charge of the situation with a practiced ease. He takes strength from her confidence. Confidence was good. Confidence meant they weren’t going to lose another crew member today to the murderous treachery of an individual he’d once held in high esteem. 

A Council Spectre, and a turian, no less. Saren was a disgrace to his entire race.

The gathered crowd begins to thin as the bulk of the group moves towards the front of the ship, helping those injured during the fighting, and the abrupt silence that falls around them makes the cavernous space in the bowels of the ship seem smaller, somehow. It doesn’t take long until the space is pretty much deserted, leaving just Garrus and Wrex alone with the smoking wreck of the Mako.

“Well.” Wrex’s voice is like gravel, loud and abrasive against the quiet. The Krogan had not gotten through the battle unmarred, none of them had; a series of lacerations and scorch marks lattice his carapace, flecking his hide with streaks of umber as his body races to heal the wounds. His expression twists into a grimace as he spits off to the side, adding another stain to the already bloody tiles. “That was a stinking pile of varren dung.” 

Garrus’ harmonics thrum with subdued humour, although he wouldn’t call it a laugh. The tension sits tight in his chest, winding like the closing of a vice around his heart. “I believe the humans have a good term for it, ‘shit show’.”

“Heh. I like it.” Wrex lets out a low chuckle, his teeth gleaming in the dim light coming from the holographic interfaces that light this area of the shuttle bay as he offers a grin, his canines stained with blood. He’ll heal, though, he always does.

“You should wash that blood off of yourself, turian, before you have a reaction.”

“I don’t have a severe reaction to levo-configuration enantiomers.” The look Wrex gives him is a mixture of surprise and skepticism, and he goes on to explain, “I accidentally swallowed a mouthful of Shepard’s drink once. Our glasses got mixed up. It wasn’t too dreadful.”

“You went out drinking with the Commander?”

“On Novaria. It was pretty much the only good thing about that place, and we could only afford the cheap stuff. It tasted like Ryncol.” Wrex barks out a loud laugh, and Garrus can’t help but smile at the memory, remembering their drunken stumble back to the ship, and the hangover he’d been plagued with the next morning. He lets out a long breath, feeling some of the post-battle tension finally ebb away, although it won’t leave him completely until he has the confirmation that Shepard has pulled through.

Wrex’s gravelly voice draws Garrus from his thoughts, and he makes a concerted effort to remove himself from his thoughts as he turns his attention back to the Krogan, who’s eyeing him with an expectant expression. 

“What was that?”

“I said: I’m surprised you let her take you out onto that frozen rock.”

“It was a personal request from Shepard. I couldn’t turn her down.”

“I see.” The look Wrex levels him with is unreadable, although Garrus isn’t sure that he likes the gleam he can see in the Krogan’s eyes. He doesn’t get the chance to question him about it, though, as Wrex pushes his weight off the wall and makes for the elevator on the opposite side of the docking bay. “Well, I’m going to go get cleaned up. I recommend you do the same, for all of our sakes.”

“Thanks, Wrex.”

The Krogan raises a hand in farewell before he’s moved out of sight, and for the first time in months, Garrus finds himself alone. 

–

He spends some time dismantling and fine tuning the calibration of his firearms, losing himself amidst the banal monotony of the work until the lights of the lower levels flicker and dim, indicating the start of the evening cycle, and he lowers the scope of his mantis with a heavy sigh.

There’s still been no word from the medical bay.

By the time he follows Wrex’s path to the elevator and to the upper deck showers the place is deserted, and after placing a block on the door that would take the average crewman a week to override, he goes about the process of unbuckling the clasps on his armour until he’s standing in nothing but his under suit. He sheds that too, before stepping into the stream of steaming water, closing his eyes as the pressure beats down against his plates. It’s not quite the same as the steam baths he’s used too – not hot enough by far, another limitation of a human-run ship - but there’s enough heat there to do the job, rinsing away the last of the dirt and the blood from the battle. 

As he watches red-tinted water swirl down into the drain, he remembers Kaidan Alenko, his voice quiet but determined over the radio as he insisted that he could handle it, he’d stay with the bomb until it was set, _go, Commander_! He remembers Shepard’s objections when they carried her onto the shuttle, the way she’d fought against their grip, in spite of her gaping wounds, to get back out there and rescue the staff lieutenant. He remembers the look on her face, the resignation and pain that had struck her expression when the detonation went off.

Not the first casualty and definitely not the last; the diminished strength of the Salarian STG task force could attest to that.

He glances to where his scope sits on top of his folded armour, the holographic interface clear and blue, confirming that he had received no new alerts from the medical bay. Spirits. _Shepard_. 

She would make it through this. She _had_ to.


End file.
